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Ciaran Williams

Publications and source records attributed to Ciaran Williams.

47 records · Page 3Linked to original sources
arXiv2011

Gluon-gluon contributions to W+ W- production and Higgs interference effects

In this paper we complete our re-assessment of the production of W boson pairs at the LHC, by calculating analytic results for the gg -> W+ W- -> (νl lν) process including the effect of massive quarks circulating in the loop. Together with the one-loop amplitudes containing the first two generations of massless quarks propagating in the loop, these diagrams can give a significant contribution with a large flux of gluons. One of the component parts of this calculation is the production of a standard model Higgs boson, gg -> H and its subsequent decay, H -> W+(-> νl) W-(-> l ν). We will quantify the importance of the interference between the Higgs boson production process and the gluon-induced continuum production in the context of searches for the Higgs boson at the Tevatron and the LHC. For instance, for mH < 140 GeV the effect of the interference typically results in around a 10% reduction in the expected number of Higgs signal events. The majority of this interference is due to non-resonant contributions. Therefore cuts on the transverse mass such as those currently used by the ATLAS collaboration reduce the destructive interference to about a 1% effect. We advocate that a cut on the maximum transverse mass be used in future Higgs searches in this channel.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2011

NLO predictions for a lepton, missing transverse momentum and dijets at the Tevatron

n this letter we investigate the various processes that can contribute to a final state consisting of a lepton, missing transverse momentum and two jets at Next to Leading Order (NLO) at the Tevatron. In particular we consider the production of W/Z + 2 jets, diboson pairs, single top and the tt process with both fully leptonic and semi-leptonic decays. We present distributions for the invariant mass of the dijet system and normalisations of the various processes, accurate to NLO.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2011

Vector boson pair production at the LHC

We present phenomenological results for vector boson pair production at the LHC, obtained using the parton-level next-to-leading order program MCFM. We include the implementation of a new process in the code, pp -> γγ, and important updates to existing processes. We incorporate fragmentation contributions in order to allow for the experimental isolation of photons in γγ, Wγ, and Zγproduction and also account for gluon-gluon initial state contributions for all relevant processes. We present results for a variety of phenomenological scenarios, at the current operating energy of \sqrt{s} = 7 TeV and for the ultimate machine goal, \sqrt{s} = 14 TeV. We investigate the impact of our predictions on several important distributions that enter into searches for new physics at the LHC.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2010

Hadronic production of a Higgs boson and two jets at next-to-leading order

We perform an update of the next-to-leading order calculation of the rate for Higgs boson production in association with two jets. Our new calculation incorporates the full analytic result for the one-loop virtual amplitude. This new theoretical information allows us to construct a code including the decay of the Higgs boson without incurring a prohibitive penalty in computer running time. Results are presented for the Tevatron, where implications for the Higgs search are sketched, and also for a range of scenarios at the LHC.

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arXiv2010

Higgs + 2 jets: Compact Analytic Results

This report describes the recent efforts to compute analytic formulae for the Next-to-Leading-Order (NLO) QCD corrections to Higgs plus two jet production at hadron colliders. In these calculations the Higgs boson couples to gluons via a top-quark loop which is integrated out to form an effective vertex. The amplitudes are further simplified by splitting the real Higgs scalar into the sum of two complex scalars phi and phi^dagger. Four-dimensional unitarity is used to construct the cut-containing pieces of the amplitude, while a variety of bootstrap and Feynman diagram techniques are used to construct the rational pieces. The results described here are valid in the limit of a large top quark mass and when the transverse momenta of the jets are less than mt.

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arXiv2009

One-loop Higgs plus four gluon amplitudes: Full analytic results

We consider one-loop amplitudes of a Higgs boson coupled to gluons in the limit of a large top quark mass. We treat the Higgs as the real part of a complex field phi that couples to the self-dual field strengths and compute the one-loop corrections to the phi-NMHV amplitude, which contains one gluon of positive helicity whilst the remaining three have negative helicity. We use four-dimensional unitarity to construct the cut-containing contributions and a hybrid of Feynman diagram and recursive based techniques to determine the rational piece. Knowledge of the phi-NMHV contribution completes the analytic calculation of the Higgs plus four gluon amplitude. For completeness we also include expressions for the remaining helicity configurations which have been calculated elsewhere. These amplitudes are relevant for Higgs plus jet production via gluon fusion in the limit where the top quark is large compared to all other scales in the problem.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2009

Analytic results for the one-loop NMHV Hqqgg amplitude

We compute the one-loop amplitude for a Higgs boson, a quark-antiquark pair and a pair of gluons of negative helicity, i.e. for the next-to-maximally helicity violating (NMHV) case, A(H, qbar-, q+, g-, g-). The calculation is performed using an effective Lagrangian which is valid in the limit of very large top quark mass. As a result of this paper all amplitudes for the transition of a Higgs boson into 4 partons are now known analytically at one-loop order.

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arXiv2008

One-Loop Gluonic Amplitudes from Single Unitarity Cuts

We show that one-loop amplitudes in massless gauge theories can be determined from single cuts. By cutting a single propagator and putting it on-shell, the integrand of an n-point one-loop integral is transformed into an (n+2)-particle tree level amplitude. The single-cut approach described here is complementary to the double or multiple unitarity cut approaches commonly used in the literature. In common with these approaches, if the cut is taken in four dimensions, one finds only the cut-constructible parts of the amplitude, while if the cut is in D=4-2 epsilon dimensions, both rational and cut-constructible parts are obtained. We test our method by reproducing the known results for the fully rational all-plus and mostly-plus QCD amplitudes A^{(1)}_4(1^+,2^+,3^+,4^+) and A^{(1)}_5(1^+,2^+,3^+,4^+,5^+). We also rederive expressions for the scalar loop contribution to the four-gluon MHV amplitude, A_4^{(1,N=0)}(-,-,+,+) which has both cut-constructible and rational contributions, and the fully cut-constructible n-gluon MHV amplitude in N=4 Supersymetric Yang-Mills, A_4^{(1,N=4)}(-,-,+,...,+).

hep-th↗
arXiv2008

One-loop phi-MHV amplitudes using the unitarity bootstrap: the general helicity case

We consider a Higgs boson coupled to gluons via the five-dimensional effective operator H tr G_{μν}G^{μν}. We treat H as the real part of a complex field phi that couples to the selfdual gluon field strengths and compute the one-loop corrections to the phi-MHV amplitudes involving phi, two negative helicity gluons and an arbitrary number of positive helicity gluons. Our results generalise earlier work where the two negative helicity gluons were constrained to be colour adjacent. We use four-dimensional unitarity to construct the cut-containing contributions and the recently developed recursion relations to obtain the rational contribution for an arbitrary number of external gluons. We solve the recursion relations and give explicit results for up to four external gluons. These amplitudes are relevant for Higgs plus jet production via gluon fusion in the limit where the top quark mass is large compared to all other scales in the problem.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2008

MHV amplitudes in N=2 SQCD and in N=4 SYM at one loop

Using four-dimensional unitarity and MHV-rules we calculate the one-loop MHV amplitudes with all external particles in the adjoint representation for N=2 supersymmetric QCD with N_f fundamental flavours. We start by considering such amplitudes in the superconformal N=4 gauge theory where the N=4 supersymmetric Ward identities (SWI) guarantee that all MHV amplitudes for all types of external particles are given by the corresponding tree-level result times a universal helicity- and particle-type-independent contribution. In N=2 SQCD the MHV amplitudes differ from those for N=4 for general values of N_f and N_c. However, for N_f=2N_c where the N=2 SQCD is conformal, the N=2 MHV amplitudes (with all external particles in the adjoint representation) are identical to the N=4results. This factorisation at one-loop motivates us to pose a question if there may be a BDS-like factorisation for these amplitudes which also holds at higher orders of perturbation theory in superconformal N=2 theory.

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